By yesterday lunchtime the temperature had struggled to reach 8C but during the afternoon the wind swung into the south and the mercury hit 16C. Yet when we woke this morning the wind had backed into the northeast and the haar duly rolled in off a cold sea. Not that any of this was of the slightest interest to....
....most of the small birds, the males concentrating on finding the best vantage point from which to sing - this is one of the recently-returned willow warblers.
This isn't true of all of them: the goldfinches are still moving around in small groups of up to six, while the siskins are in larger packs. I suppose that, at some point, they do settle down to the business of creating the next generation. I hope so, as their voracious feeding habits are costing us a fortune in sunflower seeds.
We see plenty of wood pigeons moving around, often in pairs, in the higher branches of the forestry, such a difference to the same species in East Anglia where flocks in the hundreds descend on the huge arable fields.
At last the first of what I think of as the summer wildflowers have appeared and, as usual, they challenge me to identify them. Last year I said I would not spend hours at this often hopeless task, only to find that I was back at it, and this one too I've had to try. I think it's a red dead-nettle; maybe.
When we left the house the morning for our daily walk this rabbit watched us from the other side of the road. One of our neighbours encourages them by putting out food, which I don't mind as long as the rabbits stick to what she's offering them and leave alone the plants which have begun to establish themselves in our new garden.
By yesterday lunchtime the temperature had struggled to reach 8C but during the afternoon the wind swung into the south and the mercury hit 16C. Yet when we woke this morning the wind had backed into the northeast and the haar duly rolled in off a cold sea. Not that any of this was of the slightest interest to....
Yes, Red Dead-nettle. One of the many Mints which I find so confusing. My wife uses an application on her phone to put names to these things. I will have to venture the new tec. and see if it makes learning the names easier.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the identification, Derryck. If there's an app that helps with identification, I'd love to know about it.
DeleteThe app is called Google Lens. I have just installed it on my phone and it works. It becomes an icon which you tap and the screen becomes a camera viewer with a shutter button. If you then take a picture of an object, Google will then present close matches with names. Anything from a coffee table to a tree; useful for identifying garden and pot plants etc which have lost their lables. It is free and you can find the app by typing in Google Lens, then Install. Go and test it on some plants you know to check how accurate you need to be in framing the shot and what details the algorithm needs to successfully identify the object. I don't know how accurate it will be with fungi as they can be visually very similar, but worth a try on the St Georges mushrooms.
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